


wash the revenge from your eyes

by buckstiel



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Friends to Lovers, Mid season 4, Sparring, The Hunt, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24094990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: Daisy knows the path calling Basira's name. It's the same one she's so long called her own.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	wash the revenge from your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> takes place during ep148, specifically after the opening scene
> 
> anyway. i have 18 more episodes to finish before i'm caught up, excuse lore inaccuracies, etc. my reward for finishing this is one last binge session so i can finally throw myself into the sun. (posting two fics in a week during quarantine is like. i feel goddamn possessed.)
> 
> unbeta'd. title from "antigone today" by richard jackson

When Basira arrives back at the Institute that afternoon, there’s a hundred other things that ought to grab Daisy’s attention first--the bag tossed to the floor instead of its habitual hook, the careful movement of her fingers around the desk keys and that telltale sign of coming aches and stiffness. Daisy knows how Basira moves through the world better than she does any other human or monster with two feet on this same ground, and across Daisy’s back, there’s a twinge of phantom hackles trying to come back to life.

What Daisy notices first is that Basira is wearing a new headscarf, some golden yellow number that turns the fluorescent lights of the office soft in its sheen. It holds the dark copper of her skin in a halo.

(It’s no surprise that she emerged from the depths of that coffin with more anxieties sitting heavily on her shoulders. Being alone, that one everybody knows, but there are others she hasn’t voiced. The barely-there earthy grain on fresh mushrooms from the supermarket. The snug fit of a favorite pair of jeans. The twinging thought that whatever version of her life she was ripped from in that wax museum is not the one Jon brought her back to.

It’s a strange life if Basira goes clothes shopping out of anything other than pure necessity.)

“You really sat there in the same room while Jon recorded?” Basira says. Stray papers jostle themselves into piles under the quick movement of her hands, a couple fingers pausing over an orange sticky note.

“I mean… yeah,” she says. “He was the only one here.”

“But he… you know. He did his thing? While you were there? His…” It barely qualifies as a slurping noise, and it pulls apart as she grimaces. “Ugh, _feeding_. I didn’t want to say it.”

“You really can’t tell.”

“Hm.”

At this distance, the details aren’t clear, but the orange square is full of cramped handwriting headed by a large looping _B_ that Daisy’s only ever seen on notes from Martin. “What’s that about?” Daisy nods toward it.

“Was about to ask if you saw him leave it. I guess that’s a no?” When Daisy nods, another _hm_ passes through a pursed frown, the note crumpling under her hand in a swift motion.

As she turns to brush the orange wad into the bin, that’s when Daisy notices the patch of rusty brown in the folds pooling above Basira’s neck. “Where, uh…” Daisy catches her eye and the question holds in her throat, stifling, and there’s a moment where she wonders if you can be crushed to death from the inside out. “Where did you say you went today?”

“I didn’t.”

“Right. But I’m--”

“But you’re asking.” It’s not a question. After a few moments, she says, “Saw Elias. Had a talk.” All short, clipped tones betraying the bucking tumult behind them.

The best part about knowing someone better than you know anyone else, Daisy’s decided, is that if you ever lose parts of yourself, it’s not the end of the world. The tether is still there. At times she feels half a meter out of sync from her own body, but then Basira says this and then the script appears behind her eyes, a worn thing that knows her shape.

Someone else would ask how Elias was. What Daisy asks is: “How’d you leave him?” Her gaze doesn’t meet Basira’s, rather lingering on the dark blemish.

The blood.

“Not as bad off as I would have liked.” Her mouth scrunches to one side, then another. “Better than what Melanie would have done in my position.”

Daisy nods. She nods and she knows she shouldn’t be, because those hundred other things that fell from her notice when she caught the sunshine lining Basira’s jaw spring up like all those mushrooms that now make her shudder. The course of action formulates before she has time to commit words to it, and then she’s leaning against Basira’s desk, arms grabbing at her sides as they tend to nowadays, saying, “You’re saying you still have steam to blow off.”

Which is how they end up in a back corner of artifact storage--the shelves are emptier, an impression in the dust layers left from whatever once twiddled its thumbs in wait. A calliope, someone said in passing, the same one that wheezed and sang the night their story turned on its head.

But instead of the calliope, someone had left a set of cheap mats, the kind that elementary school gym teachers would fish out of the lockers in service of a gymnastics unit, sickly bright blocks of primary color dulled by years of bare feet and sweat. Beside Basira’s headscarf, the mat’s yellows are nearly brown.

“Haven’t done this in a while,” Basira says.

Her knees bounce with a rhythmic energy, and Daisy can only watch while she tries in vain to stretch. The burn in her muscles as she pulls, she luxuriates in it. The fact there’s room for that extra millimeter of her offers more relief than she can articulate on a good day, or think about on a bad one.

“Extenuating circumstances," Daisy says, and there’s a glint to Basira’s gaze she doesn’t like.

She can’t like it. If she stares hard enough at the ridges of Basira’s knuckles, a metallic scent stings at the inside of her nose; the tense clench of her teeth send a threaded shock of pain from temple to temple. That sharpness shoots up to the corners of her eyes, and suddenly she’s trying not to cry. Daisy Tonner doesn’t fucking cry.

“Go on then,” Basira says, like it’s old times. And when she sees the jerking hesitation at Daisy’s elbows, she doesn’t wait before throwing a fist into the empty air between them.

It misses; it was never going to land, not with Daisy’s reflexes, and the rush of air beside her ear floods her system, pulls her mouth up into a toothy grin that wants to drag her down into a comfortable familiar haze.

Their arms lock around each other, tense and straining; one of Basira’s legs lands at an odd angle against Daisy’s knee and they tumble, barely staying on the mat while dust rises around them in plumes. They’re both coughing, securing their holds--Basira pinning an arm above Daisy’s head, Daisy locking her legs in an intricate knot and holding them both in place. Maintaining the balance here sends their muscles shaking in a coaxing tempo. See, the Hunt never left Daisy as much as she muzzled it with vise grip, and she knows this, and she knows the rest of their Archives cadre knows this. And she also knows every time they point to her as a good example while Jon spirals away from what they see as the man they knew, as if they’re not spinning off in their own terrible directions.

With Basira pressing her into the grimy mat and the cold concrete beneath it, Daisy can let herself go, a centimeter at a time, until the curl of Basira’s mouth wavers.

“What’s that about?”

“You tell me.” In an instant, Daisy jerks her legs and the weight shifts, and she’s straddling her thighs, wrists held fast to her sides. She’s aware the leer of her face is edging into predatory, but it’s mirrored in the halo under her. The halo that’s maybe not a halo, but just a hopeful projection, but she tries not to dwell. “If a cop’s going to beat someone senseless, they normally don’t wait til they’re off the force.”

Basira struggles against Daisy’s hold, breaks free, and their arms knot around each other in the struggle to land on top. “Look,” Daisy continues, “Even if you’re not listening for it, you hear things here.” A half-second of an eased grip lets Basira flip her, landing on her stomach while Basira’s knees jab up into her armpits. “Threatening to put Jon down like a dog sounds like you’ve been cribbing my notes--”

“Shut up--”

Leveraging her knees, Daisy arcs her back and throws Basira off, and within seconds they’ve both scrambled back to their feet, circling each other as wide as the mats allow.

“What are you doing, Basira?”

“I’m trying to pick up the pieces,” she says, hopping forward in a feint Daisy easily anticipates. “The ones left from Jon and Martin, and all the ones from Sasha and Tim and Prentiss that we’ll never find--”

“Like you’re the one level-headed beacon of humanity among monsters, is that it?”

This stops Basira cold, her arms half wrapped around Daisy’s, shielding herself as their feet shook holding their stances immobile, pressed into a tense equilibrium .

“I know why you’re not satisfied,” Daisy continues. “What good is The Hunt when he’s locked up, when you can’t finish the job? And all those books you throw yourself into--all that written knowledge isn’t as good as the real thing, is it? Some part of you is jealous of what The Eye has given Jon--”

All the air in her lungs is knocked out in a single instance the way Basira whirls her to the ground, a knee following close behind her ribcage, angled so nothing will break or fracture. There’s a way, they discovered, to keep the house standing while ripping apart the insides, and the only surprise they register is directed at the absence of it as they use this against each other.

“I dare you to say that again,” Basira says.

“You don’t scare me. There’s plenty that does, but you’re not on the list.” She takes a deep breath, lets her chest strain at everything she’s trying to hold there. The earth that pressed into her for so many months never let her get this far, this swollen with oxygen, but she senses Basira’s grip ease with the rise of her chest; and in the hesitation, she flips them again. She rolls over her, hoists her up so their legs are tangled together and they’re chest to chest, the angles of their bodies digging into the muted red plastic.

“I see how you looked at me when I was so far gone, “ Daisy says, and Basira only stares at the gap between their wrists. “You don’t think I’d do the same?”

“It’s not like that.” Basira’s mouth is a painfully thin line.

“But could it be? Do you want me to take that chance?”

“I--”

“You already run into every situation flying by the seat of your pants,” she says, and her grip on Basira’s arm shakes. “How am I supposed to know if that’s you or that’s some terrible new instinct? And how am I supposed to understand your sudden fascination with the Archives library? What am I supposed to do?”

At this, Basira meets her gaze. There’s a defiant line to her brow, her mouth, and the glow of her headscarf’s halo shines in a way Daisy wants to call angry.

“I can’t let you lose yourself. Not when you’re the only person who’s ever come after me.”

“But Jon--”

“He only went in the coffin because of you,” she says. And maybe she’s close to shouting, louder than she’s spoken since emerging back into the light. “So it wouldn’t have to be you down there. I--”

Her words falter without warning, collapsing on her tongue; Basira’s gaze wavers between anger and concern, and Daisy’s thoughts stutter to a halt. Her hands grasp the warm golden aura as an anchor, a means to pull herself into shore. She kisses Basira clumsily, pulls back, and the flash in her blood sends her heart thrumming into a panic, like she’s going to fall back into those old habits for good, and she senses distantly her hands starting to quiver--

Until they don’t anymore, somehow bracketed in warmth--Basira’s hands, locked around them, drawing them toward her chest, then just one up to her face. Slowly, painfully so. She presses a kiss to the inside of Daisy’s wrist. “Okay,” she says, barely audible, but Daisy can feel it against her skin. “You’ve got my back.”

“Always.”

“You’ll keep me safe.” She doesn’t have to say _from myself_ , but Daisy hears it anyway.

“As best as I--”

“Daisy.”

She nods. Keeps nodding until the _yeses_ fall from her mouth in a jumble and Basira is taking her face in her hands, a desperate gentle insistence in how her lips move against hers, how her hands trace the outline of her body like she’s reassuring herself she’s still there, whole. Basira is so close against her but this time Daisy can’t taste dirt in her mouth. There’s only an anchor. There’s only the bright surges in her veins that she knows, now, she doesn’t have to run from.


End file.
